by B. C. James
Brock swerved hard to the right, sending a classic AMC Gremlin into a fire hydrant.
“The flames came from above us!” he said with some surprise.
Baldr stuck his head out of the hole where there was once a rear window and twisted his body so that he could see above them. As he poked his head out, a silhouette of something above them blotted out the sun. He a saw a dragon flying high above, keeping pace with the Challenger and drawing back its head to fire at them again.
Chapter 23
Even at a distance, Baldr recognized the huge flying reptile. “Nidhogg,” he said aloud, the panic in his voice building with each consonant.
“What the hell is a Nidhogg?” Brock shouted.
Nidhogg the Dragon should have been back in Hel, blissfully munching on Yggdrasil’s root, but here he was, angrily hurling fireballs at their speeding vehicle. One of the biggest problem with dragons was that most of the things they did, they tended to do angrily. And that was just how they liked it.
Nidhogg was a particularly nasty representative of his species. He looked like a Velociraptor that had spontaneously sprouted massive bat wings and grown to the size of an Orca. He had muscular hind legs and smaller, arm-like, forelimbs. At the end of each arm was a heavily clawed, four-fingered hand that included an opposable thumb, perfect for either grasping or filleting. It depended on his mood. Baldr could see the sun glinting off its talons as the beast reared back its head to launch another fireball.
“Let’s just say he’s a little more volatile than Puff the Magic Dragon,” Freya said, trying not to panic Brock while he was in control of their vehicular situation, “Especially with a Valkyrie at the reins.”
“Incoming!” Baldr yelled. “Bank left…LEFT!”
Brock swerved the Challenger to the left and cut in front of a tanker truck that was travelling in the center lane of the highway. The truck, in an effort to avoid a collision, went hard to its left as well. All sorts of physics spontaneously and violently came into play as the large, top heavy vehicle attempted to go from sixty miles an hour to a dead stop while simultaneously turning hard to the left. The vehicle jackknifed and flipped on its side.
Freya’s eyes followed the truck with interest as it wrecked on the highway. The green diamond placard posted on its side with the words Liquid Nitrogen written under it caught her attention. The jackknifed tanker truck gave her an idea of what to do to save their lives in the face of a dragon with a flaming sort of Tourette’s syndrome.
Firestorms from the heavens were usually the calling card of a dragon attack. Like most successful predators, dragons were hardwired for a specific style of assault. They liked to attack fast-moving prey with strikes from the sky, aiming for either glancing blows, or looking for a way to disable its target with shrapnel. Once their quarry was wounded, the predator came to the ground to finish the victim off.
The reason for this behavior was very simple: dragons liked fresh meat. Truth be told, they preferred to start feeding while their prey was still alive with warm blood pumping through its arteries. Incinerating their quarry completely from the heavens didn’t leave much to call a meal. Not even Paula Dean could turn the charred bone and ash pile from a direct hit into something palatable.
So far, Baldr had done little more than hold his head out the back window and shout frantic driving instructions to Brock.
“Right!!! Right!!!” Baldr yelled into the car.
Brock swerved to the right as scimitar-like talons tore at the empty air where his pride and joy had been driving mere heartbeats before.
Freya watched through the windshield as Nidhogg accelerated past them and rose back into the sky. She unconsciously shuddered. Nidhogg had the same sickly pallor of people who have died with their bodies left to fester in sun. His coloring was unique to his species. Dragons were generally brightly colored and look as if Henri Matisse had a go at them with an airbrush. Perhaps Nidhogg’s pale coloring was due to his time in the underworld, locked away from the sun. Maybe it was just a byproduct of calling a place of the dead his home. Either way, it didn’t really matter. For whatever reason, this dragon looked like a large, reptilian zombie ascending into the sky.
“Can’t you make us disappear…go invisible or something?!?” Brock yelled back to Baldr.
“If that truck couldn’t see us, he never would have swerved, and we would be flattened on the freeway instead of him. I can’t select who will see us and who won’t, so becoming invisible will NOT help us. Wait, I have an idea. Can you drive steady for a second?”
“I can try.” For Brock, this was no easy task. The other drivers on the freeway were either gawking at the impossible sight of a dragon cruising overhead or they were in full panic mode and driving like the 101 was a carnival bumper car ride.
Brock kept things as stable as he could while trying to avoid a wreck. He was pretty sure that even if he survived a pileup, his insurance company would argue that while they might employ a gecko as a spokesman, nothing in his policy makes them responsible for damage by dragons.
Baldr hung out the back window and pointed his fist toward the sky. He stared up at Nidhogg as the dragon turned and positioned himself for another pass. Baldr sweated with concentration as he got a bead on the dragon and its rider.
Nidhogg thrashed viciously as the Valkyrie violently spurred him on. Baldr recognized the lithe form that sat atop the pale monster. He couldn’t see her face, but he had spent enough time in Hel watching the Valkyrie ride flying horses and dragons to identify many of them by the way they handled their beasts. The aggressive ease with which she controlled Nidhogg combined with the unique way she kept herself lifted from the saddle, like a professional jockey, made it clear they were facing the one named Brittany, the Valkyrie’s second in command.
“Brittany’s trying to kill me!” he muttered to himself. He then thought that with the possible exception of Kevin Federline, nobody on the planet had ever spoken those words aloud.
He did his best to get a bead on the rider, but Brittany was doing an excellent job of keeping the dragon’s neck between herself and the car. Firing at the dragon was going to have to do.
A laser blast shot through his arm and out his fist. Baldr had been experimenting with laser light for a little while, but he had never released that large or powerful of a blast during his tinkering. The feeling was like nothing he had ever experienced before. The gathering of power from the light of the Sun combined with the sudden release of that energy was euphoric. He resisted the urge to scream “Proton Torpedoes Away!!” but instead just grinned like a maniac.
Even if Nidhogg had any comprehension of what was going on, he still could not have reacted fast enough. The burst that left Baldr’s hand moved at 186,000 miles per second and slammed into what the God of Light had hoped was the dragon’s exposed underbelly. The laser exploded against the dragon’s armored skin in a flare that could have been the finale of a really good fireworks show. Apparently the term “soft underbelly” didn’t apply to dragons from Hel. There was no sound at the impact except an enraged snarl from the startled reptile. The force of the blow sent Nidhogg tumbling through the air. Baldr’s sense of euphoria disappeared when the dragon regained control of his wings and came diving at them, spitting fire in their direction as they tried to escape.
“Peddle faster Brock! I’ve just pissed it off good!” Baldr yelled back into the car.
Brock deftly maneuvered through a highway that had become an unorganized retreat of dragon induced panic and balls of fire. He truly had some mad skills behind the wheel. It was as if there was some Dale Earnhardt DNA running through his body. Unfortunately, all the skill in the world would not save them. Freya knew that it was only a matter of time before they ran out of luck.
She, Baldr, and probably Thor would survive if one of his shots scored a direct hit on the car. Brock would probably die instantly; and he would be the lucky one. The gods faced a bleaker, shorter future. Nidhogg not only feasted on the flesh of his victim
s, but the souls as well. It was not a simple process that started when the dragon ate them and ended with the three of them sitting through their “new arrival” orientation class in Hel. Being eaten by Nidhogg was the end—the absolute end. You were erased, not only from the world of the living but from the afterlife as well. His victims joined the ranks of the nonexistent. If they were caught on the ground by Nidhogg, then that was the fate that awaited them. This was something she couldn’t allow to happen, and she had a plan prevent it.
“Brock, turn the car around! Head back to where that truck wrecked. I have an idea.”
“So, do I,” Brock said from between gritted teeth, “hold on!”
He pushed the engine as fast as it would go and careened on to the West Glendale Avenue exit ramp. Police sirens were coming from all directions, but they didn’t even notice the fact that Brock was treating the posted speed limits the way a Kennedy treated a three-drink limit. Many of the officers had stopped their cars and were shooting at the dragon from behind the doors of their cruisers. Nidhogg wasn’t slowed a moment by the hail of bullets as the slugs bounced harmlessly off of skin and scales that could have protected a Panzer tank.
Brock took a screeching left on to North Glen Harbor Boulevard, which was easier said than done. The turn took him from his westbound lane, over the divider, across the oncoming traffic in the east bound lane, and then the wrong way up the entrance ramp.
In the wake of what can only be called a masterclass in offensive driving skills, everyone in the Challenger could hear the sound of crunching metal as cars got out of Brock’s way. The sound of exploding police cruisers added to the din, as Nidhogg responded to the cops’ bullets with his own form of biological napalm.
“What the hell are you doing?!” Freya exclaimed as she reached back to steady the unconscious Thor as best she could.
“I’m heading for the airport. Let’s see how that…that…thing… maneuvers in crowded airspace.”
Freya could think of a number of reasons why this could be a very bad idea, but the intense look on Brock’s face made it clear that this plan was not a debatable issue. He looked off into the distance and saw a dot in the western sky. “Perrrrfect,” he muttered to himself.
Glendale Municipal Airport was not exactly JFK or Chicago’s O’Hare. In the grand scheme of things, it was nothing more than tiny little airfield with a really good café. All Brock needed for his plan to succeed was a plane. A big one would be best, but any plane would do.
Nidhogg had fallen a little behind as he seemed to be having fun buzzing the police cruisers and laying blankets of fire over them. Brock needed the dragon closer…and too angry to notice anything but them.
“Baldr…can you get that thing’s attention?” he yelled to the back seat where the God of Light was still hanging out the rear window. “I need it to be closer to us!”
“You want it closer?!?”
“Yeah…and I want it to be angry when it gets here!”
“Brock, whose side are you on?” Freya chimed in.
“Just trust me; I know what I’m doing…sort of. Aw hell, screw it; I have no idea what I’m doing. They didn’t cover dragons at community college, but this might work.”
“What might work?” Freya asked without trying to hide the skepticism in her voice.
“Just think about the sort of splat that happens when a bug hits a windshield, that’s what I have in mind. Hey Baldr, start firing! And brace yourself; we will be taking a few hard turns!”
Baldr pulled himself into the car and started launching a volley of laser bolts at Nidhogg like a tail gunner shooting at enemy planes. Brock took a sudden left, turning off the road and onto the desert sand, heading for the tiny airport’s only landing strip. He crashed through the fence, physically wincing as he considered how bad the scratches on his car were going to be afterward.
“I don’t think I’m making a dent in it!” Baldr yelled out in frustration.
“Don’t worry about hurting it,” Brock yelled back, “Just make sure that thing is so angry that it can’t focus on anything but us!”
Brock and Freya could see the bright reflection of residual light reflecting off of the rear view mirror as a laser display that was one part Radiohead concert and one part Death Star erupted from the back window. The wail of fury that came from the beast was absolutely alien. It was as if the furious warble of a turkey was run through the voice box of a lion and then amplified through a Marshall stack rigged for heavy feedback and maximum distortion. This was not a sound for the faint of heart or weak of bladder.
Baldr did his best to keep his bodily functions in check. “If pissing this thing off was my job, just call me employee of the month. That is one seriously annoyed reptile.”
When Freya turned and looked out the back window, she couldn’t help thinking that Baldr was understating the incredibly obvious. Nidhogg was screaming and thrashing while flying after them and hurling biologically generated flames in their direction. The dragon was bucking so hard that, despite her skill, Brittany had apparently given up on trying to control the animal. She was settling for just hanging on for dear life. If the Professional Bull Riders league had witnessed her in-flight acrobatics, they would have named her their World Champion in Perpetuity and then folded up the sport. Sitting on mildly annoyed cow for eight seconds would now seem boring and pointless.
Nidhogg’s attacks came in two forms, either a long stream, like that of a flamethrower, or as balls of fire. A miss didn’t mean the end of the danger. The flames didn’t simply die off after they were shot. Like some of the nastier flame weapons developed by militaries across the globe, the flames stuck to objects and continued to burn. Brock could not even risk a glancing blow, or the result could be a hole burned right through the car, possibly disabling it, or worse, the gas tank exploding. If the passengers survived, they would be left on the open ground of the airfield with no cover and nowhere to run.
The good news was that Nidhogg had the bad habit of telegraphing his shots. This was something that Brock quickly picked up on. Before launching a barrage of flames, the dragon would cock his neck back. He would then thrust forward for the attack. When Brock looked in the rearview mirror, and saw that head start to recoil, he knew it was time to employ whatever sweet evasive maneuvers he had learned from watching the Dukes of Hazzard.
“Whatever you’re going to do…do it soon…this thing is gaining,” Baldr said in a panic. He felt like he was the only one in the car who was appropriately worried. Thor was unconscious and doing his best impression of an eggplant. It seemed as though Freya and Brock naively believed that all they had to worry about was dying. Baldr’s time in Hel made him keenly aware of the things that were worse than death; many of which Nidhogg was very capable of. In the case of Baldr’s car mates, ignorance was truly bliss.
Brock didn’t want to say anything; these were Freya’s friends after all. But he was starting to think that the words “little bitch” may have been an accurate description of Baldr. Of course, the dragon was gaining on them! He was allowing it to catch up. While everyone else’s attention was directed at how tantalizingly close the dragon was, and its fiery focus completely on them, nobody noticed that the little speck that Brock had seen in the distance a few minutes ago had grown into a large, four-engine military transport plane.
Glendale Municipal Airport was commonly used by the Air Force when there was too much going on at Luke Air Force base and they needed someplace close to land their planes. In this case, a C-17, carrying supplies and a couple of dozen soldiers who were hitching a ride from Georgia to Arizona, was coming in for a landing.
The plane was a couple hundred feet from the ground and dropping fast as Brock skidded on to the landing strip and gunned his Challenger toward the descending cargo plane. The two vehicles sped towards one another. This game of chicken could not have looked more mismatched if Brock was driving one of those tiny, Shriner cars.
The plane was about fifty feet off the groun
d when the Challenger sped under it. Nidhogg was so focused on the car that he didn’t notice the plane coming his way. At the last moment, the monster realized the danger and twisted in the air to avoid colliding with the nose of the C-17 but couldn’t dodge the transport’s wing. A detonation of dragon fire, jet engines, and exploding fuel erupted as Nidhogg rammed into the plane.
Brock, Freya, and Baldr didn’t get the opportunity to celebrate their victory with high fives and fist bumps. The C-17 was extremely low when it became the first aircraft in history to crash while trying to suck a surly dragon into its jet intake. The Challenger was subsequently caught in the thrust of the engines. The car was launched into the air like it was a small Kansas farmhouse being lifted by a supernatural tornado. But instead of finding themselves set down in the land ruled by the great and powerful Oz, the speeding car was sent flipping, end over end, across the landing strip. It settled into an upside-down flaming heap on the runway.
Chapter 24
For the first time in her life, Freya wished she had listened to all those television public service announcement ads about the importance of wearing your seatbelt. Especially since Brock’s Challenger was on the wrong end of an impromptu physics experiment, answering the question “what happens when a 4,400-pound car runs smack dab into the 35,000 pounds of thrust produced by extremely large jet engines?”
While it is unlikely that any scientist or physicist would use the term “Malt-O-Meal” to describe the results of an experiment, Freya felt those were the best words to sum up what condition the car was left in when the jet’s backwash was done with it.
Her head hurt and her face was resting against the car’s dome light. She flipped over on to her back and saw the spent airbag and the dent in the dashboard where her head made contact at what felt like warp speed. Her headbutt to the car’s interior left a divot that would have impressed the most hardcore Samoan professional wrestler.
